<\/p>\n
Before we arrived in Hong Kong, or the fragrant harbour to translate the name literally,\u00a0our last 4 to 5 days of biking had\u00a0been almost all downhill, funneling us ever toward the coast and finally\u00a0ending at She Kou, a port city wrapped in the chaos that is ShenZhen and just across the way from Hong Kong’s new territories.<\/p>\n
We found the ferry terminal pretty easily, concluded that in fact we would be able to put all of our gear on the boat (for an extra 5 US dollars per bike if we carried them on ourselves) and then took off to look for a place to stay.\u00a0 The area right by the port was very developed for China and the effects of the spread of Hong Kong’s wealth was very apparent.\u00a0 Other foreigners could be seen being bussed in on huge tour buses, led off in a daze and shuttled through line in order to get onto the next ferry, we watched.\u00a0 Both baffled and concerned looks turned the necks of both travelers and the ferries employees.\u00a0 One rather tall almost slender man in a leather Harley Davidson jacket and a thick Australian accent asked us if we were doing a bike tour, our answer of course was yes.\u00a0 He promptly told us he liked to stick to taxis and buses.<\/p>\n
We began biking back up the hill towards the city in order to find a place to stay.\u00a0 Even though it was developed this area has seen an influx of millions of migrant workers in the last few decades and there must be cheaper places to stay other than the obvious large hotels in the area.\u00a0 The city of ShenZhen is a rather unique place.\u00a0 In 1979 then Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping declared it as China’s first economic free zone, opening a tidal wave of foreign investment and\u00a0business.\u00a0 People soon began to arrive looking for work and opportunity.\u00a0 From a small coastal fishing village ShenZhen soon grew to\u00a0millions.\u00a0\u00a0Today there\u00a0is an official population of 9 million but the surrounding area brings that up even more.\u00a0 The average age is less than thirty, and a major problem is that people do not possess\u00a0the hukou, or resident card, making work difficult or illegal.\u00a0\u00a0I personally knew a number of people moving\u00a0to ShenZhen after graduation when I worked in Changsha, I still know of one there today.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
People from all over the country of China fill this city, with little or\u00a0no family, friends, or social network.\u00a0 Crime becomes a problem, prostitution is a problem, and disease can become a problem, in fact the SARS epidemic first started in this region and quickly spread among workers stacked in housing and dormitories with few health precautions or health education.\u00a0 The\u00a0book China Syndrom <\/u>by Karl Taro Greenfeld discusses both concerns of this city in detail and the SARS epidemic.<\/p>\n
Although the night before we had stayed in factory style dormitories, a cement room, a spicket to wash in, we were lucky enough to find another option that turned out to be\u00a0a great experience.\u00a0<\/p>\n
We were asking a young man if there were any inexpensive Luguans in the area and he mentioned a few.\u00a0 After talking with him a while though he said he knew a place we could stay and we should follow him.\u00a0 He led us back to an apartment complex, he riding an electric bicycle, a common mode of transportation in China, and us on our bicycles.\u00a0 We stopped in front of a steel garage door, it opened into a large cement garage, two rooms were made in the rear out of plywood dividers, there was more than enough room for us to put our bicycles and sleep on the floor with our camping gear, we said it looked great, because it did, and he showed us a good place to eat dinner.\u00a0\u00a0Although he did not want to eat with us he said he would return, which he did after our meal to bring us back.\u00a0 We returned, set up “camp” and began to talk.\u00a0<\/p>\n
His name was Zhou, he was 24 years old and part of the Yizu \u5f5d<\/span><\/a>\u65cf<\/span><\/a>\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>minority group\u00a0one of the 55 recognized groups by the Chinese government.\u00a0 Because of this he told us he was\u00a0given a few different benefits that other Han Chinese\u00a0are not.\u00a0 He gets extra vacation time on his minorities holidays to go home and visit with family.\u00a0 He also gets a small amount of money from the government.\u00a0 For\u00a0two years he worked in the military in Tibet.\u00a0\u00a0Although he didn’t like it much because the weather was too cold.\u00a0 He then lived in Malaysia for a while, then moved to ShenZhen.\u00a0 He works two jobs and lives in this\u00a0building with his girlfriend.\u00a0 He is a security guard at a nearby location and also delivers tanks of natural gas to people\u00a0by means of\u00a0his\u00a0heavy duty 28 inch bicycle.\u00a0\u00a0Not too long ago he got injured at work and was sent to a hospital in Macau to recover, a rare\u00a0thing among common workers, and\u00a0he told us we should go there to visit if we get a chance.\u00a0<\/p>\n He crossed the street and brought\u00a0back peanuts,\u00a0Pepsi,\u00a0a case of beer, and a few people to look at us.\u00a0 We sat on our camping mats, chatted, played music, and ate snacks.\u00a0 In the morning we got up early\u00a0in order to make it to the ferry on time, he was up already though getting ready to go for a\u00a0run.\u00a0 In the\u00a0military he had to run 10k a day, he now runs 5k every morning to stay in shape.\u00a0 We\u00a0graciously said thank you, offered just one more time to give him money which he would not accept, and then biked off to find breakfast and our way to the ferry.<\/p>\n We encounter all kinds of people everyday, and when someone goes out of their way to help us, especially when they don’t have a lot\u00a0to start with themselves it really speaks loudly.\u00a0 We are expecailly thankful to people like Mr. Zhou for giving us insight into their lives and offering\u00a0us a very uniqe experience.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Before we arrived in Hong Kong, or the fragrant harbour to translate the name literally,\u00a0our last 4 to 5 days of biking had\u00a0been almost all downhill, funneling us ever toward the coast and finally\u00a0ending at She Kou, a port city wrapped in the chaos that is ShenZhen and just across the way from Hong Kong’s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-78","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-adams-posts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/0708.fueledbyrice.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/0708.fueledbyrice.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/0708.fueledbyrice.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/0708.fueledbyrice.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/0708.fueledbyrice.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=78"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/0708.fueledbyrice.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/0708.fueledbyrice.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=78"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/0708.fueledbyrice.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=78"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/0708.fueledbyrice.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=78"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}